Cycling and substrate

Hi all

I'm having trouble cycling my filter. I have two tanks - one is mine and one is my flatmate's. We both have axolotl so while I'm having trouble with my tank my precious water babies are in her tank. Both tanks were purchased and set up at the same time but hers has cycled fine and mine won't. No idea why!!

I've actually just completely torn the whole set up apart because my flatmate put pond snails in my tank and I wanted to get rid of them. So since I'm completely starting fresh I wanted to get some help on my set up so hopefully it will cycle properly. I have replaced all filter media and substrate. It will be bare bottom tank till I source new substrate - more on that later. How can I make sure my tank will cycle properly this time? Last time it had nitrite levels that were off the chart and no matter what I did they wouldn't come down! They stayed crazy high for well two months until I dismantled the setup on the weekend. So any help on how to cycle my tank in a simple and easy to understand method would be great. Thanks

Also, I'm from NZ and really want a fine black silica sand for my substrate and I can't seem to find any in NZ - only white fine silica sand. Anybody know where I can find it?? I don't really want to use white because I have a gorgeous leucistic and he blends in too much on white - I want him to really stand out Thanks for any help!!

I'm probably the worst person to respond because of all the issues I've had with cycling mine, but these are the tips I can offer (and what I'm doing to cycle my 10-gallon "grow up" tank for my second axie).

Try to get some substrate, ornament, filter media, anything from the currently cycled tank. It will be loaded with good bacteria that will get you off to a good start.

You'll also want to dose your tank with ammonia. I've heard of a lot of people buying cleaning ammonia, but I had trouble when trying that and since you already have access to axolotl waste I'd just take the poo from the axies and add it to the tank you're trying to cycle. That way you have an all-natural source of ammonia that will also be representative of the amount of waste that will be going into the tank. I've just been adding it to my second tank whenever I see a good sample to take (my little stinker likes to pulverize her poos before I can get to them).

Monitor the **** out of the water parameters. I've been putting off reading mine for a week (and may try to go one more week, I'll see how I do tomorrow) just to avoid the frustration of testing every day and seeing nothing happen, but when it's something somewhat urgent (as I could see being the case since you already have your axolotl) I'd do tests every day or at least every other day.

TLDR; Add an ornament, substrate, or filter media from the cycled tank to yours (or all three if you can!), add axie poo as a natural source of ammonia to get the cycle started, monitor your water parameters

Okay, thank you for those tips!! I can't use substrate, ornaments or filter media because the cycled tank has pond snails which I do NOT want in my tank again and those little suckers get EVERYWHERE... But I will definitely take on your natural ammonia tip and monitoring tip. I didn't even think about using poo that it is genius